


Books (GND)

by whatdoyouthinkmyjobis



Series: Hunters on the Hellmouth [31]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Books, Crossover, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Morning Cuddles, POV Outsider, Set in Sunnydale, Sweet, Sweet Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9293009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis/pseuds/whatdoyouthinkmyjobis
Summary: It's been less than 24 hours since Jada was attacked. She decides to focus on the one thing going right in her life: Sam Winchester.





	

Sam slapped his alarm and rolled over, slipping his arms around Jada, bleary-eyed but smiling. He gently kissed her forehead. “Ready to face today’s monsters?” he asked.

She made toast and eggs while he showered. As he ate, she stole glances at him over her coffee, the steam curling around her face. She offered small smiles and no words.

Sex had been the furthest thing from his mind last night; he was much more concerned with Jada’s safety and any mental breaks over having met a vampire. Instead, she seemed to let loose. Not too loose. No, Jada was still reserved, withholding. But if a slow fuck was what she wanted, Sam wasn’t going to disappoint.

He reached across the table to touch her arm. “You okay?”

A tight smile. A nod. “How are you going to prove I’m not a vampire?”

“That’s easy,” he said with a knowing grin.

Ten minutes later, he managed to coax Dottie onto the roof where Jada, wrapped in his shirt and a blanket, stood in the cool morning sun. The old woman wept from relief and shame as Sam sneaked away to work.

* * *

When Sam arrived home after an unexpectedly long day at work, Jada and her aunt were out. He reassured himself this was a good sign. She wasn’t too traumatized by the attack.

Grabbing a newspaper and settling in at the dining table, he attempted to put his concerns to rest by looking for possible demon or vampire activity while Dawn worked on her Algebra beside him. But it was hard to concentrate with Dean’s groaning.

“Harder, babe.”

“Harder?” Buffy asked, smirking as she kneaded a knot out of his back. “Do you want me to break you?”

“If it means I don’t have to hang anymore drywall,” Dean said into the couch pillow.

Sam ripped out a suspicious obituary. “Can it wait until the weekend? I’ll help. That’s a bitch of a one-man job.”

Dean rolled onto his back with a dramatic sigh and pulled Buffy into his arms. “Boss wants it done by Friday. Says he has interested renters who want to see the place.”

“People move into Sunnydale?” Dawn asked without looking up from her homework.

Buffy lightly kissed Dean’s jaw before settling back down on his chest. “I have tomorrow off. I could help before my class.”

“You have homework!” said Dawn eagerly.

“Are you questioning the queen of multitasking?” Buffy asked. “Ooh! Speaking of crazy-busy days, you guys have any Thanksgiving plans?”

“Sorry, Buffy,” said Sam. “We already made plans with our other group of friends.”

Dawn stopped writing and scrunched her face at him. “You have _other_ – oh, I got it.”

There was a knock at the door and Dawn leapt from her seat. “Pizza! Thank God!”

* * *

 

To Jada’s surprise, a teenage girl with large doe eyes and long, pin-straight hair answered the door. The girl regarded her skeptically. “You’re not the pizza man.”

Sam appeared behind the girl, smiling sweetly. “Hey, Jada. I like the hair.”

Her hair had fallen to the middle of her back, dark and shiny as jet, but after a psycho used it as a handle to drag her from her car, she felt due for a cut. She skimmed her fingers through her fresh bob. “Thanks. I just had it done.”

She mentally kicked herself. He’d run his fingers through her hair that morning, brushing it aside to kiss her shoulder. He knew the cut was new.

All day, Jada had pointed out the obvious, felt disconnected from the moment. At the police station, someone asked if she was there to report a crime. “It was definitely illegal,” she’d replied. She’d driven off with a cup of coffee sitting on top of her car.

Aunt Dottie poked her back. “In or out!”

Dottie, overcome with remorse for having kicked Jada out in her hour of need, had refused to leave her side all day, even accompanying her to the salon. Other than the occasional vampire side story, she’d been relatively lucid.

“Come in,” said Sam, holding the door open for them.

Dean laid on the couch, at ease with a pretty, young blonde beside him.

The teenager complained to the couple, “I thought we’d decided on pizza for dinner.”

“Voted down, kiddo,” said Dean.

“I voted pizza. You voted pizza. Buffy voted barf salad. The math says pizza.”

“Barf salad?” the blonde – Buffy – repeated.

“Your sister gets more than one vote,” Dean replied, eliciting a quick kiss from his girlfriend.

“This is Buffy and Dawn Summers.” Sam gestured at the two girls. “This is Jada, my, uh –”

“Neighbor,” Jada said to spare him from naming them while she shook Buffy’s hand. “And this is my Aunt Dottie.”

Dawn nodded at Dottie. “She’s hissed at us a few times.”

“Dawn!” her sister exclaimed.

“Okay time to go.” Dean slid off the couch and grabbed a piece of paper from the table. “Sorry, ladies, we were heading to dinner.”

Dawn rolled her eyes and shuffled toward the door.

“Nice meeting you,” Buffy said as she followed.

Dean leaned toward Jada on his way out and whispered, “You okay?”

She smiled tightly. “Better.”

“Good. Nice seeing you,” he said with a smile before joining the Summerses in the hall.

“Who names a child Buffy?” Dottie asked before settling down in a chair.

Jada felt woozy. The mention of dinner reminded her she’d substituted coffee for lunch, struggling to stay awake after an eventful night. She took a seat at the dining table, afraid the comfort of the couch would lull her to sleep.

Sam, still wearing his dress pants and crisp white shirt, stood beside her, hands in his pockets. “I knocked on your door after work.”

“Hair appointment,” she said.

“Are you really better?”

Not expecting anything but unsure of what to do, Jada had gone to the police. They took her statement, and assured her in a disinterested voice that they would look into it. They didn’t even look at the bite. Dottie muttering about vampires probably hadn’t helped them believe her.

She tried calling her friends. Yvonne, her best friend in the middle of her residency, answered with a groggy, “This better be important.” Jada decided to skip the weirder details and focus on the injury. “He _bit_ you?” After a quick rundown of wound care and multiple demands Jada get some blood work done, Yvonne hung up with a promise to call back at a less sleep-deprived time.

Tiffany, going out of her mind at home with an infant and a toddler, was morbidly thrilled with the entire story. “Sweetie, that’s terrible! What did you do?”

“I, uh, I went home,” she confessed, embarrassed.

“Caitlyn, Mommy’s on the phone with Santa. Go watch your cartoons, or I’ll tell him about this morning,” Tiffany barked. “Okay, I’m back! You were bleeding from the neck, and you were like, ‘Just a scratch. No big.’”

Why hadn’t she gone to the hospital? She’s panicked, yes, but the situation made her crave the safety of home. The safety of Sam.

Jada idly touched the torn newspaper on the table. When she was jumped in college, it shook her for a bit, but she pulled herself together and moved on. This felt…different, like the world was split in before and after.

Jada gazed at her aunt, beginning to doze in the chair, and back to Sam. “She won’t let me out of her sight. She even put a wooden stake in her purse.”

“Good day or bad day for her?”

“Pretty good. I can’t really begrudge her the vampire fantasies after someone bit my neck.” Jada glanced at the paper. Someone had torn out an obituary. For a moment, she worried her attacker had found a second victim, had killed someone, before remembering Sam’s macabre little habit.

“It felt so intimate,” she said. “I think… I think he was going to kill me, Sam.”

The words festered in the air, but she needed them out. The realization had rattled alone in her head all day. She needed a witness.

Sam leaned over and kissed her head. “But he didn’t. You were strong and fought him off. You’re safe.”

Jada sighed. Since the day she’d met him, Sam had an uncanny ability to say what she needed to hear. She was strong, and like before, she could get through this.

But she wouldn’t turn down help.

“Are you up for a silly favor?” she asked, trying to look flirty, but not finding the energy.

“Sure,” he said with a warm smile.

“Auntie would like to go to the library after dinner. She’s actually overdue on a few books. But that will be after sunset…”

“You may not know this about me, but I happen to love libraries.” Sam’s dimples were deep, his face charming. She couldn’t help but smile when she looked at him.

* * *

 

The Sunnydale library was an unwelcoming concrete box that screamed 1970s right down to the orange carpet. Despite its lack of charm, it was usually bustling with people. Two students, possibly from the high school the way they giggled and whispered about Sam behind their books, and a woman with a small child waited in line behind them while Jada sorted her aunt’s fees and got a library card of her own.

As they waited, Sam laced his fingers with hers. She wanted to disappear into that moment, the warmth of him, his protective halo holding her close.

“You got any books on self defense?” Dottie asked the young man behind the counter.

The man, heavy-set with thick glasses, chuckled. “We do. We also host a class in the basement on Tuesday nights.”

“That’s what you need,” the old woman said, tapping Jada’s arm. “Sign up and learn to kick some ass.”

“I’ll consider it, Auntie.”

Dottie took off in the direction of the self defense books, and Jada and Sam, hand-in-hand, lazily followed her. The shelf was small, limited to _For Dummies_ , _For Beginners_ and _For Women_. Dottie handed Jada _Self-Defense for Women_ and scurried to a different part of the library.

Jada put the book back on the shelf. She’d done alright against her attacker, although she couldn’t help but wonder if throwing her groceries at him instead of shoving them in the car may have prevented her from being bitten. Something about taking a self-defense class or even reading a book chilled her; it was an admission it could happen again. She couldn’t face that idea yet.

Sam looked up from the forensic science book in his hands. “A no then?”

“A not now. _The Scene of the Crime_?” she asked, desperate to not talk about it.

He slid the book back into the gap on the shelf. “I briefly thought about going into criminal law.”

That explained some of the books overflowing from his bookcase and nightstand, a mix of thrillers, crime fiction, true crime stories, histories, and – to Jada’s dismay – books about monsters and other supernatural fantasies.

“Where’s your aunt?” Sam asked, looking over Jada’s head.

Jada groaned to herself. “Where would the monster books be?”

“Took you long enough,” said the old woman, turning the page on a book of folklore without glancing up. “Were you necking in the stacks?”

 _Necking_? mouthed Sam.

Just being in the aisle which fueled so many arguments made tiredness settle in Jada’s bones, pulling her down.

Dottie shoved a book in her face and pointed at a large picture. “Did he look like this?”

It was a charcoal portrait of a man with a protruding, wrinkled brow and overly large canines. Underneath it said, _A vampire’s demon form_. It looked unsettlingly familiar, like a scary movie she’d seen as a child.

Sam rested his hand on her back. “The man who attacked you, what did he look like again?”

Jada shook her head. Blonde hair, blue eyes, suit. No fangs. He must have put those in his mouth before grabbing her. His face was scarred somehow, but not like this. It couldn’t be like this.

She slammed the book closed and shoved it back on the shelf, not caring where it belonged. “He was just some preppy college kid with a psycho bent. Auntie, will you be okay here alone for a while?”

Dottie ran her wrinkled hand over the spines. “I’m gonna learn how to make holy water! Protect my Sweets Girl.”

“Wonderful,” Jada said, dashing from the cramped space and taking a deep breath as she leaned on a study table.

“Jada, I’m sorry,” said Sam, hovering near her. “I shouldn’t have brought it up–”’

“I feel like no one is taking me seriously,” she hissed, startled by the bitterness of her own voice. “Someone tried to kill me, and he’s still out there. Still crazy. And everyone is so caught up on the ridiculous neck bite, that they all want to grab their torches and pitchforks for a monster hunt. This isn’t an adventure!”

“No, it’s a nightmare,” he replied, softly.

“It’s my life,” she said, squeezing his hand and looking into his eyes. “Sam, I really like you, but I’m kind of a mess right now. If you wanted to cut your losses and run, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“I’m not that easily intimidated. Besides, parts of last night weren’t terrible.”

She grinned, heat rushing to her face. “No, not terrible at all. Definitely want to do that again.”

“Me too,” he said. “Anything in particular you wanted to check out while we’re here?”

“You,” she said, before bursting into a laugh and covering her smile with her hand. “Wow. That was cheesy.”

Sam pulled her into an empty aisle and kissed her, sending a tingle from her lips to her toes and turning her bones to jelly. He grinned at her, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “It’s nice to see you smile again.”

“It’s easy to smile around you.”

“So books,” he said, his eye half closed and lingering on her lips, reading clearly the furthest thing from his mind.

She bit her lip, happy to focus on flirting. “I was thinking classics. Romance. British.”

Sam chuckled. “Not my strong area.”

“Mr. Librarian, are you telling me you’ve never read Jane Austen?”

He shook his head.

“Well, it’s time you meet the Bennet sisters and Mr. Darcy.”

“I thought you didn’t like fiction,” he said.

“I don’t like fantasies,” she clarified. “Right now, the social and romantic problems of British aristocracy sound like a perfect distraction from my increasingly surreal life.”

“So what kind of reader are you?” he asked.

“What?”

“Me, I’m a read anywhere kind of person. In the car. While I’m eating. While my brother is blaring Judas Priest. What’s your ritual?”

“Normally, I need hot cocoa, a blanket and Marmalade purring away in my lap, but I was thinking about doing something different.” She leaned into him as she spoke, his corded arms supporting her.

He grinned at her, waiting for her to spell it out.

“Auntie should fall asleep soon after we get home. I was thinking I could come over and read to you, but I’m still going to need blankets and quiet.”

“I know a place.” He skimmed his fingers along her back. “How important is clothing in this equation?”

“Optional.”

 


End file.
